Al-Ali: The Struggle for Iraq’s Future

Zaid Al-Ali has recently published The Struggle for Iraq’s Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy (Yale University Press). In The Struggle for Iraq’s Future, Ali provides an Iraqi perspective on the state-building process following the 2003 war in Iraq, detailing the violence, rising sectarianism, and lack of provision of security, healthcare, and electricity. Ali asserts that “the ill-planned U.S. intervention destroyed the Iraqi state, creating a black hole which corrupt and incompetent members of the elite have made their own.” He argues that, despite this period of contention and political instability, Iraqis have retained a strong sense of national identity.